The Beast Series by Alianne Donnelly

Author:Alianne Donnelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy, shapeshifter, fairy tale, curse, tarot cards, the beast, beauty and the beast, bastien
Publisher: Alianne Donnelly

Chapter Twenty-three

The hag’s rose is wilting. If it’s even hers at all. The flower could have come from anywhere, and the Beast’s memories of that night are so distorted he no longer knows what is real and what isn’t. It’s beyond tempting to simply pretend it was all a bad dream, a figment of Bastien’s crazed mind.

But Angelique is real. Was real. Jacques and some of the women moved her body to the ice room and scrubbed the floors of her blood. The Beast can still smell it there, anyway. It is obvious no one will be coming to claim her. The bastard Lafarge probably didn’t even tell anyone she is dead. It would be just like him to feign ignorance. All he needs to do is wait long enough for everyone to assume she ran away. After a while, if she doesn’t turn up, he’ll be able to annul the union and take another wife.

There is only one thing the Beast can do about it.

He has Angelique buried in the garden next to his parents. Though his memory of them is all but nonexistent, he knows they would have welcomed Angelique as their own. The Beast couldn’t save the young woman, but perhaps he can give her, in death, the peace she deserved while she was alive.

“You say the hag showed him the woman?” Jacques asks.

“For all I know, it was a hallucination.”

“But what if it wasn’t?” Jacques says eagerly. “Surely she wouldn’t have appeared without reason. It must mean something. She must be close by. If we could just—”

The Beast laughs. “It’s been almost three hundred years, Jacques. How much longer will you cling to your hope before you realize it’s nothing but an illusion? This is it. This is what our lives will be like for all of eternity.”

“There is always a way out of a difficult situation.”

“Absolutely,” he says. “And it’s quite easy. Go and fetch one of the villagers here and watch how quickly he’ll find something to skewer me with. Go on, what are you waiting for? Only someone unaffected by the curse can break it, so the solution should be obvious.” He shudders as he says the words. His death would break the curse, true, but it would also kill the woman. That surety is there whether he wants to believe it or not. Bastien believes it and that taints the Beast’s own perception.

“We don’t know what it would do to the rest of us. It might kill us all if you were to die.” Apparently, this is something Jacques has considered before.

“Haven’t you lived long enough?” The Beast sounds weary saying it.

“I have existed far too long,” Jacques agrees. “But it is a state not to be confused with living. None of us have been living these three centuries. We haven’t changed, aged, grown up, had children, or died. That, Master, is not life. And, while I would be most content to... cease, I would not presume to make that choice for the others.

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